But it pertained to God, by whose inspiration these things were written, first to arrange and distinguish these two societies by their diverse generations: so that separately the generations of men — that is, of those living according to man — and separately those of the sons of God — that is, of men living according to God — might be woven together down to the flood, where the separation and the commingling of both societies is narrated. The separation, indeed, in that the generations of both are recorded separately, of the one, the fratricide Cain, of the other, him who was called Seth (for he too had been born of Adam in place of him whom his brother slew); but the commingling, because, the good declining to the worse, all had become such as to be destroyed by the flood;
except one righteous man, whose name was Noah, and his wife and three sons and as many daughters-in-law, which eight persons deserved to escape by the ark from that devastation of all mortals. As, therefore, it is written: 'And Cain knew his wife, and conceiving she bore Enoch; and he was building a city in the name of his son Enoch' — it does not indeed follow that he should be believed to have begotten this as his first son. For this is not to be supposed from the fact that he is said to have known his wife, as though he then first mingled with her by lying together. For even of Adam himself, the father of all, this was not said only then, when Cain was conceived, whom he seems to have had as firstborn; but afterward the same Scripture says:
'Adam,' it says, 'knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore a son, and he called his name Seth.' Whence it is understood that Scripture is wont so to speak — although it is not always the case, when in it we read that conceptions of men occurred, that it was only when either sex first mingled with the other. Nor is that a necessary argument, that we should think Enoch was the firstborn to his father, because the city was named after him. For it is not out of place that, for some reason, the father should love him more than the rest, even though he had others also. For neither was Judah the firstborn, from whom Judaea got its name, and the Jews.
But even if that son was born first to the founder of that city, it is not therefore to be supposed that the name was then imposed by the father on the city he founded, when the son was born, because a city could not then be constituted by one man — a city being nothing else than a multitude of men bound together by some bond of society; but when that man's family increased to so great a number that it now had the quantity of a people, then it could of course come to pass that he should both constitute a city and impose on the city thus constituted the name of his firstborn. For so long was the life of those men, that of those there recorded, whose years are also not left unmentioned, he who lived least before the flood reached seven hundred and fifty-three.
For very many even passed nine hundred years, although no one reached a thousand. Who, then, would doubt that through the lifetime of one man the human race could be so multiplied that there might be whence not one, but very many cities could be constituted? This can most easily be conjectured from the fact that from the one Abraham, in not much more than four hundred years, so great a numerousness of the Hebrew nation was procreated that, in the exodus of that same people from Egypt, six hundred thousand men of military youth are reported to have existed; to say nothing of the nation of the Idumaeans, not belonging to the people of Israel, which his brother Esau, Abraham's grandson, begot, and the other peoples born from the seed of Abraham himself, procreated not through his wife Sarah.
Wherefore no prudent estimator of things would doubt that Cain could found not merely some city, but even a great one, when the life of mortals was prolonged to so long a time — unless perchance some one of the unbelievers should thrust upon us a question from the very great number of years during which men are then written to have lived in our authorities, and should deny that this is to be believed. For thus they do not believe either that the magnitudes of bodies were then far ampler than they now are. Whence even their most noble poet Virgil, concerning a huge stone which, fixed as a boundary-mark in the border of the fields, a strong man of those times, fighting, both snatched up and ran and whirled and hurled:
'Scarcely,' he says, 'could twice six chosen men lift it upon their necks — such bodies of men as the earth now brings forth' — signifying that the earth was then wont to bring forth greater bodies. How much more, therefore, in the more recent times of the world, before that renowned and notorious flood! But concerning the magnitude of bodies, sepulchres, laid bare through age or through the force of rivers and various accidents, for the most part convict the incredulous, where there have appeared, or from whence there have fallen, bones of the dead of incredible magnitude. I myself saw — not I alone, but several with me — on the shore of Utica a molar tooth of a man so huge that, if it were cut up into small pieces after the measure of our teeth, it seemed it could have made a hundred of them. But that, I would believe, was of some giant.
For besides that the bodies of all were then much greater than ours, the giants far surpassed the rest; just as afterward, in other times and in our own, there have been — rare indeed, but scarcely ever wholly lacking — such as would very greatly exceed the measure of others. Pliny the Second, a most learned man, testifies that the more and more the course of the age passes on, nature bears smaller bodies; and he records that Homer too often complained of this in his song, not deriding these as poetic fictions, but taking them into historic credence as a writer of natural marvels. But, as I have said, the bones which are for the most part found, since they are lasting, betray to ages even much later the magnitudes of the ancients' bodies.
But the great number of years of each man's life, which existed in those times, can now come into experimental proof by no such documents. Nor yet is faith on that account to be withdrawn from this sacred history, whose things narrated we the more impudently disbelieve, the more certainly we behold its foretold things fulfilled. Yet the same Pliny says there is even now a nation where men live two hundred years. If, therefore, the long durations of human lives, which we have not experienced, are believed to be had today in places unknown to us, why should it not be believed that times also had them? Or is it credible that there is somewhere what is not here, and incredible that there once was what now is not?
Wherefore, although between the Hebrew codices and ours there seems to be some disparity concerning the very number of years — by what reason it came about I know not — yet it is not so great that they should disagree that those men were so long-lived. For the very first man, Adam, before he begot the son who was called Seth, is found in our codices to have lived two hundred and thirty years, but in the Hebrew is said to be one hundred and thirty; but after he begot him, he is read to have lived seven hundred years in ours, but eight hundred in theirs; and thus in both the sum of the total agrees. And thereafter, through the consequent generations, before he is begotten who is recorded to be begotten, the father is found to have lived a hundred years less among the Hebrews;
but after that same one is begotten, a hundred years more are found in ours than in the Hebrew; and thus both here and there the sum-total of numbers accords. In the sixth generation the two codices nowhere disagree. But in the seventh, where he who was born, Enoch, is narrated not to have died, but to have been translated because he pleased God, there is the same discrepancy which there was in the preceding five concerning the hundred years before he begot the son who is there recorded, and in the sum a like accord. For he lived, before he was translated, according to both codices, three hundred and sixty-five years. The eighth generation has indeed some diversity, but a lesser one and unlike the rest.
For Methuselah, whom Enoch begot, before he begot him who follows next in that order, lived, according to the Hebrews, not a hundred less, but twenty more years; which again in ours are found added after he begot him, and in both the sum of the whole number meets together for itself. In the ninth generation alone — that is, in the years of Lamech, son of Methuselah, and father of Noah — the sum of the total differs, but not by very much. For he is found to have lived twenty-four years more in the Hebrews than in our codices. For before he begot the son who was called Noah, he has six fewer in the Hebrews than in ours; but after he begot him, thirty more in the same than in ours.
Whence, those six being subtracted, twenty-four remain, as was said. Now through this discrepancy of the Hebrew codices and ours arises that most famous question, where Methuselah is computed to have lived fourteen years after the flood, whereas the Scripture records that, out of all who were then on the earth, only eight men escaped the destruction of the flood in the ark, among whom Methuselah was not. For according to our codices, Methuselah, before he begot him whom he called Lamech, lived a hundred sixty-seven years; then Lamech himself, before Noah was born of him, lived a hundred eighty-eight years, which together make three hundred fifty-five;
to these are added the six hundred years of Noah, in whose six-hundredth year the flood happened: which make nine hundred fifty-five, from when Methuselah was born up to the year of the flood. But all the years of Methuselah's life are computed as nine hundred sixty-nine, because, when he had lived a hundred sixty-seven years and had begotten the son who was called Lamech, after begetting him he lived eight hundred and two years; which all, as we have said, make nine hundred sixty-nine. Whence, nine hundred fifty-five being subtracted, from the birth of Methuselah up to the flood, there remain fourteen years, in which he is believed to have lived after the flood.
On account of which some suppose that he, though not on the earth — where it is agreed that all flesh which nature does not allow to live in the waters was destroyed — was for some while with his father who had been translated, and there lived until the flood should pass by; being unwilling to derogate faith from the codices which the Church has received into a more celebrated authority, and believing that the Jews rather than these do not have what is true.
For they do not admit that there could rather have been here an error of the translators, than a falsehood in that language from which the Scripture itself was translated through the Greek into our own; but they say it is not credible that the seventy translators, who interpreted at one and the same time and with one and the same sense, could have erred, or, where nothing of theirs was at stake, could have wished to lie; whereas the Jews, while they envy us that the Law and the Prophets have passed over to us by interpretation, have changed certain things in their codices, that the authority of ours might be diminished. Let each one receive this opinion or suspicion as he shall think fit;
yet it is certain that Methuselah did not live after the flood, but died in that same year, if what is found concerning the number of years in the Hebrew codices is true. But concerning those seventy translators, what seems to me, is to be inserted more diligently in its own place, when, the Lord aiding, we shall have come to those very times, as far as the necessity of this work requires them to be recorded. For the present question it suffices that, according to both codices, the men of that age had lives so long that, in the lifetime of one man — who was first born of the two parents whom alone the earth then had — the human race could be multiplied even for the constituting of a city.
For by no means are those to be listened to who think that years were reckoned otherwise in those times — that is, of such brevity, that one of our years is believed to have contained ten of theirs. Wherefore, they say, when anyone hears or reads that each man lived nine hundred years, he ought to understand ninety; for those ten years are one of ours, and ten of ours were a hundred of theirs. And by this, as they suppose, Adam was of twenty-three years when he begot Seth; and Seth himself was going on twenty years and six months when Enos was born of him, which the Scripture calls two hundred and five years.
For, as these men suppose, whose opinion we are here setting forth, they divided one year, such as we now have, into ten parts and called these same parts 'years'; and one of these parts contains the square of six, in that God perfected His works in six days, so that on the seventh He rested (concerning which matter I have argued, as best I could, in the eleventh book). Now six times six, which number makes the square of six, comes to thirty-six days; and these multiplied by ten reach three hundred and sixty, that is, twelve lunar months.
For on account of the remaining five days by which the solar year is completed, and the quarter of a day on account of which, in every fourth year (which they call bissextile), one day is added, the ancients afterward added days so that the number of the years might come out right; these the Romans called intercalary days. Accordingly Enos too, whom Seth begot, was nineteen years old when his son Cainan was born of him, which years Scripture calls one hundred and ninety. And thereafter, throughout all the generations in which the years of men before the flood are recorded, scarcely any is found in our codices who, being a hundred years old or under, or even a hundred and twenty or not much more, begot a son;
but those who begot at the youngest age are reported to have been a hundred and sixty and something more. For no one, they say, at ten years of age can beget children, and that number was called a hundred years by those men; but at sixteen years puberty is mature and already fit for procreating offspring, and those times named these years a hundred and sixty. And that it is not incredible the year was then reckoned otherwise, they add what is found in very many writers of history: that the Egyptians had a year of four months, the Acarnanians of six months, the Lavinians of thirteen months.
Pliny the Second, having recorded that it was set down in writing that a certain man lived a hundred and fifty-two years, another ten more, others had a life of two hundred years, others of three hundred, some of five hundred, others of six hundred, and not a few reached even eight hundred, judged that all this happened through ignorance of the reckoning of times. 'For some,' he says, 'determined a year by the summer and another by the winter, others by four seasons, as the Arcadians, whose years were of three months.' He added further that the Egyptians also, whose short years we said above were of four months, sometimes limited the year by the ending of the moon.
'And so among them,' he says, 'some are even reported to have lived a thousand years each.' By such seemingly probable arguments certain persons, not destroying but striving to buttress the credibility of this sacred history, so that it might not be incredible that the ancients are reported to have lived so many years, have persuaded themselves — and do not think themselves shameless in so persuading — that so small a span of time was then called a year that ten of theirs make one of ours, and ten of ours a hundred of theirs. But that this is utterly false is shown by a most evident proof. Before I present it, I do not think I should pass over in silence what more credible surmise there may be.
We could certainly refute and confute this assertion from the Hebrew codices, where Adam is found to have been not two hundred and thirty but a hundred and thirty years old when he begot his third son; and if these years are thirteen of ours, then beyond doubt, when he first begot, he was eleven or not much more years old. Who can generate at this age by that customary and to us most well-known law of nature? But let us pass over him, who perhaps could do so even at the time he was created; for it is not credible that he was made as small as our infants are. Seth his son was not two hundred and five, as we read, but a hundred and five when he begot Enos;
and by this reckoning, according to these men, he was not yet eleven years of age. What shall I say of Cainan his son, who, though found among us to be a hundred and seventy, is read among the Hebrews to have been seventy when he begot Mahalaleel? What man of seven years begets, if seventy years were then so named which were seven? But when I have said this, it will at once be alleged that this is a Jewish falsehood, concerning which enough has been treated above; for the Seventy translators, celebrated as praiseworthy men, could not have lied.
Here, if I should ask which is more credible — that the Jewish people, so widely spread far and wide, could have conspired by a single design to write this falsehood, and, while grudging authority to others, robbed themselves of the truth; or that seventy men, who were themselves also Jews, placed in one location (since King Ptolemy of Egypt had summoned them for this work), grudged the very truth to foreign nations and did this by a shared design — who would not see which is more readily and easily to be believed?
But far be it that any prudent person should believe either that the Jews, of whatever perversity and malice, could have done so much in codices so many and dispersed so far and wide, or that those seventy memorable men shared one single design about grudging the truth to the nations. More credibly, then, one would say that, when these things first began to be copied out from Ptolemy's library, something of the sort could then have occurred in one codex — but in the one first copied out from there, whence it might already spread more widely; where indeed even a scribe's error could have happened. But this may not absurdly be surmised in that question about the life of Methuselah, and in that other one where, with twenty-four years in excess, the sum does not agree.
But in those cases where a consistent pattern of the same defect is continued — so that before the son who is inserted into the line is begotten, a hundred years are in one place in excess, in another lacking; and after he is begotten, where they were lacking they are in excess, where they were in excess they are lacking, so that the sum agrees; and this is found in the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and seventh generation — the error itself seems to have, if it may be so said, a certain constancy, and does not smack of chance but of deliberate design.
And so that diversity of numbers, which stand differently in the Greek and Latin codices and otherwise in the Hebrew — where there is not this continued parity of a hundred years first added and afterward subtracted through so many generations — should be attributed neither to the malice of the Jews nor to the diligence or prudence of the Seventy translators, but to the error of the scribe who first received the codex to be copied from the library of the aforesaid king. For even now, where numbers do not bear upon anything that can be easily understood or that appears useful to learn, they are both carelessly copied and still more carelessly corrected. For who would think it necessary for himself to learn how many thousands of men each tribe of Israel could severally have?
But here, where through so many linked generations a hundred years are in one place present, in another absent, and after the son who had to be recorded is born, they are absent where they had been present and present where they had been absent, so that the sum agrees — surely, since he who did this wished to persuade that the ancients therefore lived a most numerous count of years because they called those years very short, and was trying to show this from the maturity of puberty at which sons were fit to be begotten, and therefore thought that in those hundred years ten of ours should be insinuated to unbelievers, lest they should refuse to receive into their faith that men lived so long — he added a hundred where he did not find an age fit for begetting sons, and the same, after the sons were begotten, he subtracted, so that the sum might come out right.
For thus he wished to make credible the correspondences of ages suitable for generating offspring, yet in such a way that he would not defraud the total lifespans of the individuals living of their number. But that he did not do this in the sixth generation is the very thing that all the more warns us he did it when the matter we speak of demanded it, since he did not do it where it did not demand it. For he found in the same generation among the Hebrews that Jared lived, before he had begotten Enoch, a hundred and sixty-two years, which according to that reckoning of short years amount to sixteen years and a little less than two months;
which age is already fit for begetting, and therefore it was not necessary to add a hundred short years, so that they might become twenty-six of ours, nor after Enoch was born to subtract those which he had not added before the birth. So it came about that here there was no variance between the two sets of codices. But again it perplexes us why, in the eighth generation, before Lamech was born of Methuselah — since among the Hebrews a hundred and eighty-two years are read — twenty fewer are found in our codices, where rather a hundred are wont to be added, and after Lamech was begotten they are restored to fill out the total, which in both sets of codices does not differ.
For if he wished a hundred and seventy years to be understood, on account of the maturity of puberty, as seventeen, then just as he ought to add nothing, so ought he already to subtract nothing, because he had found an age fit for the generation of sons — for the sake of which, in other cases, he added those hundred years where he did not find it. But this matter of the twenty years we might reasonably think could have happened by chance through a defect, were it not that he took care afterward to restore them, just as he had earlier subtracted them, so that the integrity of the total might agree.
Or is it perhaps to be thought that it was done more cunningly, so that the deliberate practice, by which a hundred years are wont first to be added and afterward subtracted, might be concealed — since even there, where it had not been necessary, though not indeed of a hundred years, yet of however small a number first subtracted and afterward restored, something of the sort was done? But however this be taken — whether it be believed to have been so done or not, and whether finally it be so or not so — I should in no way doubt that it is rightly done that, when something diverse is found in the two sets of codices, since indeed both cannot be true as to the faith of the deeds recorded, credence should rather be given to that language from which the translation into the other was made through interpreters.
For in certain codices too — three Greek and one Latin and even one Syriac agreeing among themselves — it was found that Methuselah died six years before the flood. Now let us see in what way it can evidently be shown that not such short years, that ten of theirs should be one of ours, but years of such length as we now have (which the circuit of the sun assuredly makes up), were reckoned in the very long life of those men. For in the six hundredth year of the life of Noah it is written that the flood came to pass. Why then is it there read:
'And the water of the flood came upon the earth in the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month' — if that smallest year, ten of which make one of ours, had thirty-six days? Such a tiny year, if it received this name by ancient usage, either has no months, or its month is a period of three days, so that it may have twelve months. In what manner, then, is it here said: 'In the six hundredth year, in the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month,' unless because such months as now exist existed also then? For how otherwise would it be said that the flood began on the twenty-seventh day of the second month? Then afterward, at the end of the flood, it is thus read:
'And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat. But the water kept diminishing until the eleventh month; and in the eleventh month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains appeared.' If, therefore, such were the months, such assuredly were the years too as we now have. For those three-day months could not have twenty-seven days. Or if the thirtieth part of three days was then called a day, so that all things are diminished in proportion, then that so great a flood, which is recorded to have happened in forty days and nights, was not accomplished even in a whole four days of ours. Who could bear this absurdity and vanity?
Accordingly, let this error be removed, which by a false conjecture would so buttress the credibility of our Scriptures as to destroy it elsewhere. Assuredly the day was even then as great as it is now, which twenty-four hours determine by the course of day and night; the month as great as it is now, which the moon, beginning and ending, encloses;
the year as great as it is now, which twelve lunar months, with five days and a quarter added on account of the solar course, complete — of which sort the second month, and the twenty-seventh day of that month, of the six hundredth year of Noah's life was, when the flood began, in which are recorded forty continuous days of enormous rains, days which did not have two hours and a little more, but twenty-four passed by day and night.
And by this reckoning those ancients lived years so great, even upward of nine hundred, as many as Abraham afterward lived — a hundred and seventy — and after him his son Isaac a hundred and eighty, and his son Jacob a hundred and fifty, and, with some interval of time interposed, Moses a hundred and twenty, and as many as even now men live — seventy or eighty or not much more — of whom it is said: 'And more of them is labor and sorrow.' But that variety of numbers which is found between the Hebrew codices and ours neither disagrees about this longevity of the ancients; and if it has anything so diverse that both cannot be true, the faith of the deeds recorded is to be sought again from that language from which was translated what we have.